Customer loyalty is a desired objective of all businesses. As such, businesses are continuously searching for ways to keep their customers coming back. For businesses in highly competitive industries, customer loyalty is often vital to the success of the business.
However, for businesses which mainly sell common consumable products, this is a particularly difficult problem. In such industries, price is often the force driving customer purchases and, consequently, customer loyalty tends to be low. Accordingly, businesses in these industries are particularly interested in means for generating repeat business.
One means of accomplishing this is to provide a consumable product which cannot be replenished by others. However, as stated previously, this is particularly difficult to accomplish when dealing with common consumables. For instance, film processing services are widely available and, for the most part, are virtually indistinguishable from one business to another. Thus, consumers tend to choose film processing services based on price. Accordingly, film processing services are constantly searching for means to guide consumers back into their stores.
One such device developed to address this need is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 5,752,085 to Cloutier. Cloutier discloses a rental camera having an auxiliary key structured to open the film and battery reloading doors and to initiate the camera rewind mechanism. Although somewhat useful for its intended purpose, the Cloutier camera includes certain inherent limitations which limit its overall effectiveness. First, the Cloutier locking mechanism includes a fairly specific and complicated structure, which is not easily adaptable to existing camera configurations.
Additionally, many cameras are structured so that the unexposed film is pre-wound from a film cartridge loaded in the camera onto a take-up spool in the camera, with the exposed film being fed back into the cartridge as pictures are taken. Cloutier does not include means for such pre-winding. In fact, the Cloutier camera is specifically designed for rewinding after the film has been exposed and, accordingly, does not contemplate use with such pre-winding systems. Moreover, it is often desirable for such pre-wind cameras to include means for pre-winding in non-darkroom conditions so that film may be readily loaded and pre-wound at any location and in any ambient conditions. This is especially desirable for so-called "rental" cameras like that disclosed in Cloutier, which will, typically, be reloaded in a film processing store, while the consumer awaits the return of the reloaded camera.
Accordingly, there is still a need in the art for a system for cameras of the type structured for film pre-winding, which includes means for pre-winding the unexposed film in non-darkroom conditions and locking means for limiting the ability to remove and replace film to those having the proper key. Any such system should include a single tool for accomplishing both the pre-winding and unlocking functions. Any such system should also be easily adaptable to existing camera structures and easy to operate. The present invention is particularly suited to overcome those problems which remain in the art in a manner not previously known.